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The War on Sharing: Why the FSF cares about RIAA lawsuits

Submitted by John Sullivan on May 13, 2009 - 9:51am

The Free Software Foundation and DefectiveByDesign have been working with
attorney Ray Beckerman to help
fight for victims of the RIAA's baseless intimidation campaign. The RIAA
recently took
notice,
calling our position -- and by extension the position of many other anti-DRM
activists -- "virulent" and "baseless."

We've responded to these accusations in an article published at
TorrentFreak.
Fighting these lawsuits is an important part of defusing Digital Restrictions
Management -- the more of these suits that the RIAA wins, the more ammunition
they will claim to have in their repeated efforts to shoot holes in our digital
rights and control our technology.

Executives like Rolf Schmidt-Holtz of Sony Music Entertainment should get the
message and back off. Although they claimed in December that they would stop
filing lawsuits against individuals, the RIAA filed 62 more in the month of
April alone. Citizens are tired of watching their governments squander their
freedom to enrich this handful of corporations, and they are tired of being
intimidated. The FSF and DefectiveByDesign will continue our work to support
this opposition to the War on Sharing, on all fronts.